Existing Windows Phone devices will not be upgraded to Windows Phone 8

According to The Verge, existing Windows Phone devices will not be receiving an update to Windows Phone 8, but rather 7.8. The Verge talked to Microsoft’s Greg Sullivan who revealed the companies reasons behind the choice.

Sullivan explained that “the nature of the investment [in Windows Phone 8] is primarily in areas that are not exploitable by existing hardware.” Windows Phone 8 introduces support for multi-core processors, amongst other things, so the “Lumia 900 getting support for using dual-core or NFC doesn’t mean a lot,” says Sullivan, “because it doesn’t have the hardware to take advantage of that.”

The Verge also says Microsoft will be bringing Windows Phone 8 UI elements, such as the new Start screen unveiled today, to existing devices through the 7.8 update. The new Start screen has many improvements, such as the ability to change the size of a pinned tile to standard medium size, small size, and a large “double wide” size. Microsoft says the 7.8 update will make your device look and feel like it’s running WP8.

“Because you don’t have a multicore chip and don’t have some of these other elements, it didn’t make sense for us to make those investments for devices that couldn’t really exploit them.”